


Without Dreaming

by erinaceous



Category: Hetalia: Axis Powers
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Space, Drabble, M/M, One Shot
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-23
Updated: 2015-08-23
Packaged: 2018-04-16 20:50:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,260
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4639764
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/erinaceous/pseuds/erinaceous
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Alone on a starship, Alfred aches for some human company.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Without Dreaming

The nebula was like nothing Alfred had ever seen before. He'd seen them in the pictures stored on the Long Shot's data bank, but not like this. Never like this.

He zoomed in further until the telescope's image took up the entire screen, filling it with blues and reds and pinks and purples. Alfred wanted to lean into the image, reach out and run his hands through the smoky streaks. Anything was better than the black emptiness that was all he'd ever seen through the windows during his sporadic hours of waking. 

He stopped those thoughts in their tracks. Dwelling on the void that lay beyond just a metre of steel was a good way to go insane, and Alfred had no plans to do that. Sighing, he swiped the image away and propped his feet up on the ship's control panel. After all, nobody was awake to yell at him for it.

He supposed it would be time for him to return to stasis soon. The thought was depressing. He was the ship's caretaker, and it fell to him to come out of hibernation once every Earth-year to make sure everything was in order. The ship's AI took care of most things and would wake him if there was anything drastically wrong, but he thought an occasional human touch wouldn't do any harm. Forcing himself in and out of hibernation wasn't dangerous, but it was unpleasant, and so were the months of nothingness in between his little excursions. It was sleep without dreaming, and every time he lowered himself into his coffin-like stasis chamber he wondered if next year would be the year the Long Shot's AI would fail and he would hang in that nothingness for eternity.

Alfred paused, then brought the telescope's image of the nebula back. It was beautiful, and it didn't seem right not to share it.

As he turned to the far side of the control bank, to the panel that mission briefing had been very clear about him never using unless it was an emergency, Alfred realised his stomach was fluttering like some demented butterfly. He frowned. That was...new.

Before he could change his mind, he punched in the access code that would let him use the hibernation interface. By now, he hardly needed to look at the list of names to find BRAGINSKY, Dr. I.M. 

The hibernation interface was, in Alfred's humble opinion, the single most awesome gadget on the entire ship. Of the two hundred and fifty passengers on the colony ship, all were in permanent hibernation—excluding him—but only fifty had technical experience and knowledge that could, at some point in the journey, prove vital. Alfred knew a lot of things, but he couldn't possibly know everything, much as he'd like to. The hibernation interface gave him access to the minds of geneticists, linguists (in case of aliens, presumably), mechanics, and astrophysicists. 

Astrophysicists like Dr. Braginsky.

All he had to do was press the CONSULT button, and Ivan would be able to talk to him. His body wouldn't be awake, but his mind would be. Sort of. Alfred had no idea how it worked—he was an engineer, not a doctor—but it let him talk to Ivan and therefore it was cool as shit.

After a moment's hesitation, Alfred pressed the button. 

There was a moment's silence as the interface worked its magic, during which Ivan's details appeared on the black screen in square green writing, along with his ID photo.

Though he'd never actually met Dr. Braginsky in real life, Alfred had by now committed most of his details to memory. He was 32, born in Moscow on the 30th of December 2091, he studied astrophysicists at the University of St Petersburg, he was 193cm tall and weighed 86kg, and...he was unmarried. Alfred found that his mind always lingered on that detail, though he could not have said why. 

It was a habit by now, but Alfred leaned in to examine the picture of Dr. Braginsky that accompanied his information, even though he'd committed those details to memory, too. He didn't think there was anything new he could notice about Braginsky's pale, slightly curly hair, violet eyes (though Alfred thought that was probably just a trick of the camera. Who the hell had violet eyes?), his long, slightly hooked nose, or the scars on his neck, half hidden by a scarf. It had been literally decades since he had last seen another human face, Alfred told himself, so who could blame him for taking a nice long look at Dr Braginsky's picture? It was perfectly understandable. 

“Alfred?”

Alfred jumped, before remembering that it was only the computer relaying Ivan's thoughts to him, and not the ship's AI having spontaneously achieved sentience. “Yeah!” he cried, heart still pounding in his ears. Not that he thought that was an actual thing that could happen, obviously.

“Is everything all right? Why did you wake me?”

“I can see a nebula,” Alfred replied, rather sheepishly. The computerised voice was synthetic and impersonal, but the words were Ivan's, and Alfred heard the worry in them.

“Alfred, I am an astrophysicist. I have seen nebulae before.”

The ship's steward grinned to himself. If he didn't know better, he'd say Ivan actually sounded grumpy. “Are you jealous, Ivan?” he said, making sure he spoke into the microphone this time. “You want to see a nebula from space, up close, don't you?”

“Our course was not plotted to take us close to any significant celestial bodies, including nebulae. I am missing nothing.”

Alfred turned back to the nebula on the other screen. “You are, though,” he said quietly. “Ivan, there's all these colours—”

“That is generally the case with nebulae,” the computer—Ivan—stated. There was a pause. “Though the colours do vary greatly. Will you tell me about these, Alfred?”

“It...” Alfred paused. It seemed like years since he had seen anything but the cold steel interior of the Long Shot, and Ivan didn't even have that. “It's shaped a bit like one of your Russian dolls,” he said finally. “There's a bright spot where her neck would be, and...she's wearing a blue skirt.” He tilted his head to see it better. “There's some purples and pinks too. It's...it's pretty,” he finished lamely.

“They all are,” Ivan said. “Alfred, will you take a picture of it? I want to see it when I wake up.”

“Sure.” With practised speed, Alfred typed in the command that would make the telescope take a snapshot of the nebula.

“Was there anything else you needed?”

Alfred thought about all the things he wanted to talk about with Ivan. He wanted to ask him about growing up in Russia, he wanted to ask him about all the space stuff he'd never understood himself but been fascinated by anyway, he wanted to ask why Ivan had volunteered for a mission he would never return from. He wanted to wake Ivan up for real, to actually see his face in real life instead of in a photo. 

“No,” he said eventually. “That's it. I'm going to, uh, put you back to sleep now.” Okay, saying that felt weird.

“Please. This is a strange sensation.”

“Yeah. Uh, night then.”

“And Alfred?” Ivan said when his finger was hovering above the END CONSULTATION button.

“Yeah?”

“I look forward to meeting you when we reach our destination.”

“Um, same here. Goodnight.” Alfred pressed the button, sending Ivan back into oblivion. He could not have said why he was blushing.

**Author's Note:**

> This is just a drabble thing right now but once I've finished some WiPs I'll probably develop it into a full AU. At the moment I quite like the idea of space pirate!Alfred and sketchy scientist!Ivan, but...we'll see.
> 
> This fic is probably very scientifically inaccurate. I just watched Interstellar last night and I wanted to write something quick. I have no idea if a hibernation interface is actually possible, though it would be cool if it was. The nebula Alfred sees is no specific nebula but was based on the Rotten Egg/Calabash nebula, but isn't actually it because it's like 4,000 light years away.


End file.
